Where the Lilies Bloom is an amazing story about a determined 14-year-old named Mary Call Luther. Mary Call lives in rural North Carolina and is generally isolated. Her mother died years back and her father then gets sick and dies. On his deathbed he puts her in charge of keeping this desperately poor family together. Mary Call has 3 siblings- 18 year old Devola who is slow, 10 year old Romey and 5 year old Ima Dean. Her father also makes her promise not to let Devola marry their landlord Kiser Peace who is determined to marry Devola.
Crafty Mary Call gets Kiser to sign the papers giving the house they live in and the land they work to them. Mary Call’s initial plan was to keep quiet about her father’s death until she was eighteen and could adopt Romey and Ima Dean. Struggling to make money word leaks that their father is dead. To make things worse Kiser’s sister (the real landowner) shows up and tells the Luthers to leave.
Mary Call goes to desperate measures to convince Kiser (who has been in a car rec.) to beg his sister to let them have their land. Eventually Mary Call realizes that Devola and Kiser are really in love and they get married. Mary Call also succeeds along with Kiser in getting the land back. She also finally accepts help from Kiser and her, Romey, and Ima Dean are allowed to stay in their house.
I really enjoyed this book and would recommend this to anyone who enjoys learning about rural mountain tradition. The only thing about this book was it was written in the 1960s and has a lot of slang in it. Even through I didn’t have trouble understanding it some people might.
Overall I would give this book 5 out of 5 stars.